Work continues to restore service after a broken pipeline spilled hundreds of thousands of gallons of gasoline in rural Shelby County.

A spokesperson for Colonial Pipeline said it's still too early to determine the cause of the fuel spill because workers have yet to excavate the problem pipeline.

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Their main focus Tuesday was the construction of a bypass that will bring fuel to the main pipeline once connected. They expect that to be completed by Wednesday.

“We don't have a projected timeline right now because it will be determined by the conditions that we encounter. But it's important to us to be able to work with the state and federal agencies to do a complete cleanup in that area,” said Don Pozin, public information officer for Colonial Pipeline.

The company's pipeline that pumps fuel from Houston to New York City recently failed. Colonial shut it down 12 days ago.

Since then more than 700 people have been working to construct a bypass and remove the gasoline from man-made retention ponds.

“By the end of tomorrow we should have the bypass connected back into our main pipeline and gasoline flowing back to the markets here in the Southeast and throughout our system. Now it'll be a couple days for inventory levels around the region to return to normal but people, the markets will be getting deliveries very soon,” Pozin said.

According to the company, the Environmental Protection agency and Cahaba Riverkeepers, the spill has had an impact on wildlife, including the death of turtles, a fox and a few birds.

“Yeah, we've had wildlife impacts but it's small and localized to most likely the animals that were kind of in and around the pond at the time of the release,” said Kevin Eichinger, the federal on-scene coordinator for the EPA’s emergency response program.

The EPA, Emergency Management Agency, Alabama Department of Environmental Management and Cahaba Riverkeepers have all been working with the company, though the EPA says this spill doesn't compare to the most notorious big spills.

“It's a large volume, up to 336,000 gallons is the current estimate. It's a large volume but it doesn't compare to those disasters like BP, like Exxon Valdez, because this is contained. It's contained into these man-made ponds. So the damage is local. Cleanup is a lot easier and we can move quickly to get it out of the environment,” Eichinger said.